Epistle to the Washingtonians

I based a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true. One, I believe there's an Almighty, and secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free.

-President George W. Bush, address in Irvine, California, April 24, 2006

Liberalism and Western style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems. We increasingly see that people around the world are flocking towards a main focal point – that is the Almighty God. Undoubtedly through faith in God and the teachings of the prophets, the people will conquer their problems. My question for you is : Do you not want to join them?

-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, letter to George W. Bush, May 2006

I'm not sure why the Administration has so far declined to release the text of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's lengthy personal letter to George W. Bush. If nothing else, the first official communication from a leader of Iran to America in twenty-seven years is a matter of some public interest. And surely there is plenty of material here to discredit Ahmadinejad, from the rambling style and half-baked theological reasoning to his "educated guess" that the 9/11 attacks would been have impossible without the complicity of U.S. intelligence agencies. (He evidently has more faith in the efficacy of our government than I do. And I'm a liberal.)

In any event, Le Monde has it here first.

Obviously, Ahmadinejad has a lot he wants to talk about, though not much, alas, about Iran's nuclear program. And the central tactic that emerges from his tangled discourse -- challenging Bush to live up to his Christian ideals -- is both clever and probably sincerely felt. Ahmadinejad wants to show Bush how many beliefs they have in common (God should be at the center of our lives, politics is about achieving the Almighty's purposes, we all venerate Jesus, etc.). Whether we should be reassured or alarmed by all this is unclear.

One cannot feel anything but reassured by reports that Ahmadinejad is not really in control in Iran, that he is a loose cannon without any power. It's not that he fails to pose some worthy questions to our president, or that he relies on revelation rather than reason (we're getting used to that in a leader). It's just that the letter has the quality of notes jotted down on a dinner napkin, or a late-night blogging session. It shows no evidence of having been slept on -- let alone vetted by the Iranian Foreign Ministry -- before he clicked "send."

Oddly enough, the dialogue of civilizations proposed by Ahmadinejad has a faith-based frame that should be right up George W. Bush's alley. Surely the president has been interpreting God's will long enough to offer a divinely inspired riposte. Perhaps he could even challenge Ahmadinejad's Iran to live up to Muslim ideals.

As for a defense of reason, tolerance and Enlightenment values, we will probably have to wait for the next president.